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SPEECH 



HON. ¥. A. RICHARDSON, 



OF ILLINOIS. 



DELIVERED IN THE HOU8E OP REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 19, 1862. 

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, Mr. RICH- 
ARDSON said : 

Mr. Chairman : I desire this morning to submit a few remarks for 
the consideration of the House and the country. It is not my pur- 
pose to discuss questions pertaining to the army already in the field, 
which, if judiciously officered and managed, is able to crush out the 
rebellion. I shall direct my attention, therefore, to the consideration 
of some of the many new questions which are continually arising 
during the progress of this terrible civil war. 

Mr. Chairman, there is a manifest anxiety, an overweening desire, 
a persistent purpose upon the part of prominent members of the domi- 
nant party in this Government, to place upon terms of equality and 
make participants with us in the rights of American citizenship an 
inferior race. The negro race, which is incapable of either compre- 
hending or maintaining any form of government— by whom liberty 
is interpreted as licentiousness— is sought to be exalted, even at the 
cost of the degradation of our own flesh and blood. 

We all remember with what intense satisfaction a recent order of 
the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, one of the chief clerks of the 
President, was received in certain quarters, because it declared that 
no fugitive slave should be retained in custody longer than thirty days, 
unless " by special order of competent civil authority." 

Thai I may do no injustice to the head of the State Department 
and his unwarranted assumption of power, I quote the official paper 

Department of State, Washington, January 25, 1862. 

Sir: The President of the United States being satisfied that the following instructions 
contravene no law in force in this District, and that they can be executed without waiting 
lor legislation by Congress, I am directed by him to convey them to you : 

As marshal of the District of Columbia, you will not receive in f ,o custody any persons 
claimed to be held to service or labor within the District or elsewhere, and not charged 
with any crime or misdemeanor, unless upon arrest or commitment, pursuant to law, as 
ugitives from such service or labor; and you will not retain any such fugitives in cus- 
tody beyond a period of thirty days from their arrest and commitment, unless by special 
3rder of competent civil authority. 



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2 -^ 

You will forthwith cause publication to be made of this order, and at the expiration of 
ten days therefrom you will apply the same to all persons so claimed to be held to service 
or labor, and now in your custory. 

This order has no relation to any arrests made by military authority. 
I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

While Mr. Seward was issuing this order for a general jail delivery 
of the negroes, he was also sending, under a usurpation of power, 
and in violation of the laws and the Constitution, hundreds of white men 
and women to fill the cells of the prisons in this District and throughout 
the loyal States. Against many of these white men and white women 
thus incarcerated by this despotic Secre/ary of State, no charge has 
ever been made ; they are imprisoned without the form or authority 
of law, and thus the personal liberty of the Caucasian is ruthlessly 
violated while the African is most tenderly and carefully guarded, 
even to the nullification of State enactments and the national statutes. 
Let a rumor become current that a negro has been deprived of per- 
sonal liberty — either in this District or anywhere else — and there are 
dozens of Republican members upon this floor striving to obtain the at- 
tention of the House while they may offer resolutions inquiring by 
what law, by whom, when, and where, these objects of their undivided 
affections may have been arrested. But never yet has any one of those 
philanthropic gentlemen made inquiry for the law or the authority 
under which white American citizens have been kidnapped by the 
State Department, dragged from their homes, and left to pine and 
die, perchance, in some of the many bastiles which this Administra- 
tion has established. 

It is well known, sir, that if any white citizen, perhaps a father or 
brother, desires to visit 
vice of this Governm 

some competent authority ; and to obtain this, he is required upon 
his honor to declare his loyalty and fidelity to the Government. But 
the negro goes and comes within the lines of our Army without a 
pass, whether his destination be towards or from the enemy ; the 
color of the black man is his passport, and is received as equiva- 
lent to the pledge of honor and of loyalty upon the part of a white 
person. 

In this District you have abolished slavery. You have abolished 
it by compensation, by adding $1,000,000 to the national debt, and a 
tax of $78,000 to be paid aunully, as interest upon this sum, by taxes 
imposed upon the laboring white people of these States. Not satis- 
lied with doing this much for your especial favorite, you extend the 
freedom of this city and the hospitality of the Government to all the 
runaway negroes in the country who choose to visit the District ot 
Columbia. You issue rations to them day after day, and week after 
week, rations which must be paid for through the sweat and toil 
of tax-ridden white men. You are thus supporting in indolence hun- 
dreds upon hundreds of black men. How many and at what cost I 
am unable state, because when a resolution, asking for this informa- 
tion, was iiirpiduced by the honorable gentleman from Ohio, (Mr. Cox,) 
it was immediately tabled by the Republican majority upon the other 
side of this House. Those geutleuaxspaiuaK not let this information 

Weet. Bes. Hist. Soc. 



it a relative or acquaintance in the military ser- 
ent, that he is obliged to secure a "pass 1 ' from 



3 

go to the country; they shrink from the exposure which a truthful 
reply to such inquiry would make. The resolution of Mr. Cox also 
asked for the number of negroes employed as teamsters in the Army, 
and at what wages; but this was equally objectionable, for it would 
have illustrated die fact that negroes by the hundred are receiving 
better pay as drivers than our own white sons and brothers are for 
periling their lives as soldiers in the defence of the Union and the 
Constitution. 

Having been thus deprived of obtaining official information upon 
these questions, I am obliged to gather my statistics from such sources 
as I can. I shall make no statement that I have not received from 
respectable and responsible parties, and none which I do not conceive 
to be rather under than over the true estimate. 

The Government is to-day issuing rations to about two thousand 
negroes in this District alone, that cost over twenty cents per ration 
— $400 per day, in, violation of law, is being paid' for this purpose. 
The Government is hiring in the District several hundred negroes, 
some as teamsters and some for other purposes, to the exclusion of 
white laborers, thousands of whom, together with their wives and 
children, in our large cities are suffering for the want of employment. 
I speak advisedly when I say that the Republican party are already 
paying, of tax-gathered money, in this District alone, over three 
hundred thousand dollars per annum to buy, clothe, feed, and exalt 
the African race. Thus for the negro you expend more in a single 
year in the District of Columbia than you appropriate for the gov- 
ernment and protection of all the people in all the organized Terri- 
tories of the United States. The negro is made superior, in your leg- 
islation, to the pioneer white men that settle the great West, and, 
amid hardships and dangers, lay the foundations of new common- 
wealths ; the hardiest and noblest men of our common country. 

So the people are taxed yearly more for the benefit of the black 
race in this District alone than it costs to maintain th% burdens of 
State government in either Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Ehode Island, New 
Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland. 

But k is not in this District alone that you require the people to 
pay tribute to the idol of your affections. Wherever you find our 
Army, with one or two honorable exceptions, you will find that hun- 
dreds of rations are being issued daily to unemployed negroes who 
rendezvous in and about the camps ; wherever the Army is they are 
being employed in various capacities at good wages, ami to the utter 
exclusion of white labor that now languishes in irksome idleness 
throughout our country. I state, therefore, and I think truthfully, 
that the Government is already paying $100,000 per day for the 
support and employment of negroes— paying it, too, out of money 
raised through the toil, deprivations, and taxation of our own kith 
and kin. 

_ In my district, Mr. Chairman, mv constituents are sellino- corn at 
eight cents per bushel in order to support their families and maintain 
the honor and integrity of our Government. Shall money thus raised 
and tor such a purpose be diverted to the entertainment of the Afri- 



can ? Will my people, will the people anywhere, indorse the party 
and the Administration that thus seeks the elevation of the negro 
even at the cost of ruin to their own race? 

One might suppose that your ardor in the care and protection of j 
the negro would stop and cool here ; but no, you go still further. 
Having made him your equals as a civilian, you now seek to place 
him on the same level with American sailors and soldiers. First 
came the order of the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. "Welles, as follows : 

Navy Department, April 30, 1862. i 

Sir: The approach of the hot and sickly season upon the southern coast of the United i 
States renders it imperative that every precaution should be used by the officers com- 5 ! 
manding vessels to continue the excellent sanitary condition of their crews. The large 
number of persons known as "contrabands" flocking to the protection of the United 
States flag affords an opportunity to provide in every department of a ship, especially for 
boats' crews, acclimated labor. The flag officers are required to obtain the services of 
these persons for the country by enlisting them freely in the Navy, with their consent, rating 
them as boys, at eight, nine, or ten dollars per month, and one ralion. Let a monthly re- 
turn be made of the number of this class of persons employed on each vessel under your 
command. I am respectfully, your obedient servant, 

GIDEON WELLES. 

Under the plea of the approach of the sickly season, Mr. Welles 
issues this order; under the same plea the negro may be called into 
any service in the South, though the sickly season, but the terrible 
effect it might .have upon our Army and Navy was not thought of by 
any Republican official until very recently. 

Having made this progressive step in our Navy, (as my colleague 
from the Bureau district [Mr. Lovejot] would call it,) it remains to 
be emulated in our Army. Not long does it await an imitator; Gen- 
eral D. M. Hunter, commanding in the military department of South 
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, issues an order to enroll companies, 
regiments, and brigades of negroes in the military service of the Uni- 
ted States. 

Thus, in less than two years after the accession to power of the Re- 
publican party, the negro is made, as far as possible, the equal of the 
white man as a civilian, a sailor, and a soldier. Nay, more than this, 
the Constitution is violated that white men may be bereft of guaran- 
teed rights. White men are stripped of the armor of American citi- 
zenship in order that the negro may be clothed therein. All this has 
been done against the earnest protest of all conservative men. And 
propositions and amendments to bills, appropriating money for the 
suppression of the rebellion, which provided that no moneys should 
be diverted either to. the freeing, the support, or the enlistment of 
negroes, have been invariably voted down by the Republican party 
in this House. 

Worse than this even, General Hunter, in his zeal for the negro, 
withdraws the protection of his army from the loyal citizens of Jack- 
sonville, Florida, in order to perfect his great negro boarding house 
and African military academy at the mouth of the Savannah river. 
This is undoubtedly in'harmony with his brilliant discovery that Af- 
rican slavery and martial law are incompatible. Common minds have 
heretofore considered martial law and slavery, either for whites or 
blacks, among the most concordant institutions upon earth. This 



5 

proclamatory commander, who vies in profundity with the immortal 
General Phelps, undoubtedly considers martial law the very jewel 
casket of American liberty. 

My mind, Mr. Chairman, revolts at the idea of degrading; the citi- 
zen soldiery of my country to the level Of the negro. Sir, the Amer- 
ican volunteer has always been our reliance in peace, and our vin- 
dication in war. I am opposed, and you will find the volunteer army 
of the Union opposed, to the equalization in the ranks of citizens and 
slaves. Having made such efforts for the. negroes of the United 
States, it would seem that your zeal in their behalf would lag and 
languish. .But, no; you now go wandering among the islands of the 
sea and over the continents of the globe in pursuit of negro princi- 
palities and republics which you may recognize among the Powers 
of the earth. Hayti and Liberia furnish further matter for your in- 
fatuation to fatten upon, and you at once proceed to establish diplo- 
matic relations between the United States and these benighted and 
half-made parodies upon human government. 

At an annual expense of thousands of dollars, you propose to re- 
ceive negro diplomats from them and send United States ministers to 
them ; indeed are yon the champions of negro equality, without re- 
gard to cost, place, propriety, or dignity. 

This Congress has been in session nearly eight months, and all that 
I have reviewed you have done, and more you would do if you 
could, for the negro. "What have you accomplished for the white 
man? Have you provided for the payment of pensions to the sol- 
diers who have been disabled while fighting the battles of your 
country ? Have you appropriated money to relieve the wants and 
necessities of the widows and orphans of white men who have per- 
ished upon the battle-fields defending the Constitution and the flag of 
the country ? Ah, no ; your time has been too much engrossed with 
the negro to think of these things. You have not appropriated one 
dollar for these purposes — purposes which should enlist the ability 
and the sympathy of every patriot in the land. 

If this statement is incorrect; if this Republican party or its Ad- 
ministration have ever made a single effort in behalf of the maimed 
soldiers, a single appropriation for the support of the orphans and 
widows of slain soldiers, I hope some gentleman upon the other side 
of the House will correct me. There is no response, and I am reas- 
sured in the correctness of my assertion by your silence. The allevi- 
ation of the sufferings of white men or the protection of their rights 
is not in your line of philanthropy. Like your illustrious prototypes, 
Mrs. Jellaby, of the Bori-bo-la-ga mission, or the Rev. Aminidab 
Sleek, in the play of the Serious Family, to the political branch of 
which you aboltionists will soon belong, your sympathies are .never 
active in behalf of practical and genuine benevolence. 

Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to all these sickly schemes for equal- 
izing the races. God made the white man superior to the black, and 
no legislation will undo or change the decrees of Heaven. They are 
unalterable as the laws of nature, eternal as divinity itself, and to 
legislate against them leads us to infidelity and ruin. . Since creation 
dawned, the white race has improved and advanced in the scale of 



6 

being, but as the negro was then, so he is now. "But," say the abo- 
litionists, " the African has been blessed with no opportunity for im- 
provement." Who gave the white man an opportunity? God, in 
his infinite justice, placed the two races upon the earth at the begin- 
ning of time to work out their respective destinies. History has 
faithfully recorded their achievements. To that impartial tribunal I 
confidently appeal for the verification of the white man's superiority. 
As God made them so have they remained, and unlike the abolition 
equalizationists I find no fault and utter no complaint against the 
wisdom and justice of our Creator. 

The evils of the attempted equalization of the races is illustrated 
by the history of Mexico. That country was settled by the intelligent 
Spaniard, a race not inferior to our own ancestors. They developed 
the resources of the country by building roads, highways, and canals. 
All along their line of march the church and the school-house were 
erected as landmarks of their progress. But finally the idea of the 
equalizing of the races became popular ; the attempt was made, the 
races were commingled, and thenceforward the deterioration of the 
people was rapid and fearful. This holds true not only in Mexico 
and throughout Central and Southern America, but in all sections of 
the globe wherever the white race has commingled with the black or 
the Indian. This system of equalization has failed to elevate the in- 
ferior, but has always degraded the superior race. On the other hand, 
wherever the purity of the white race has been preserved, its superi- 
ority has continued, and its development, both mental and plrysical, 
progressed. Neither soil or climate, upon this continent or elsewhere, 
has ever lowered the standard of the governing race. 

For three quarters of a century the United States have led the van 
in all that is great or useful in inventions. We have made an errand 
boy of the lightning; we have applied steam as a propelling power. 
In a single year we have demonstrated the frailty of "England's 
wooden walls" by the construction of our iron-clad ships of war, and 
at the same time, by the same thought, dissipated all previously en- 
tertained opinions of sea-coast and harbor fortifications. Sir, I am 
satisfied with the history of the races as they are, as they were created, 
and as our fathers legislated for them. I claim no originality for 
these thoughts ; they have been entertained by some of the ablest 
statesmen, not only of our country, but of England, among them Mr. 
Channing, who, when the British Parliament was considering schemes 
kindred to those now occupying the attention of the Republican party 
in thisjcountry, said: 

"In dealing with the negro, sir, we must remember that we are dealing with a being 
possessing the form and strength of a man, but the intellect only of a child. To turn, 
him loose in the manhood of his physical strength, in the maturity of his physical pas- 
sions, but in the infancy of his uninstructed reason, would be to rai*e up a creature re- 
sembling the splefldid lie; ion of a recent romance, the hero of which constructs a human 
form, with all the corporeal capabilities of man, and with the thews and sinews of a 
iciant; but being unable tjo impart to the work of his hands a perception of light and 
wrong, he finds too late that he has only created a more than mortal power of doing 
mischief, and himself recoils from the monster he has made." 

One of their, great statesmen of to-day, Lord John Russell, when- 
ever he alludes to the black race in America and to a change of its 



status, talks only of very gradual emancipation, because he knows 
that sudden and unconditional emancipation would be destruction to 
both rhe negro and the white man. British statesmen opposed im- 
mediate emancipation upon the ground of expediency alone. Ameri- 
can statesmen should oppose it, not only upon that ground, but also 
upon the ground that the Constitution gives no power to i interfere 
with the domestic institutions' of the several States-^no such power 
either in peace or inlwar. 

But to reach the goal of their hopes, the abolitionists of this coun- 
tiy are willing to override expediency, the law, and the Constitution ; 
to destroy the Government itself, in order to emancipate at once all 
the slaves of the South. 

My colleague (Mr. Lovejoy) says two-thirds or three-fourths of the 
Army are abolitionists. This may be true, but upon the new consti- 
tution for the State of Illinois, which contains a provision to exclude 
negroes from locating within the State, the soldiers do not vote like 
abolitionists. Eleven of our regiments have already voted upon tlp.e 
adoption of that constitution. 

Mr. Wickliffe. How did they vote? 

Mr. Richardson. Sixty-three votes were given against it, and all 
the rest — some several thousand — were given for it. 

Throughout the State of Illinois abolitionists are opposing this con- 
stitution, and Democrats and conservative men are advocating its 
adoption. 

Four-fifths, and perhaps nine-tenths, of all the men that carry mus- 
kets and knapsacks in the army of the West are opposed to the doc- 
trines of negro equality and abolition, as preached by the gentlemen 
from the Bureau district of Illinois. He is a man of great boldness, 
apparently, and I must do him the justice to say that he advocates 
abolition and its consequences with great fearlessness, though he is 
too discreet to make as strong speeches in southern Illinois as he 
does at Chicago. He and several other gentlemen of kindred opinions 
favored me by canvassing through my district during the last cam- 
paign that I made for Congress, and it gives me great pleasure to 
state that they were quite moderate. 

A Voice: Didn't they give you votes? 

Mr. Richardson. Well, sir, they were like the boy whom the 
minister of the Gospel found fishing on Sunday. Said he, "My boy, 
you are very wicked, you ought not to be sporting upon the Sab- 
bath." " Oh," said the boy, "I ain't doing no hurt, and ain't wicked, 
for I haven't caught a single fish." [Laughter.] So it was with my 
abolition friends when they sported in my district ; they were not 
very wicked for they caught no fish. [Laughter.] 

Sir, I will not digress, but return to the consideration of the solemn 
responsibilities that are resting upon us. Our country is menaced by 
secessionists in arms, rebels, upon one hand, and by abolitionists, nul- 
lifiers of the laws and the Constitution, upon the other. Sir, I pro- 
pose bayonets for the former, ballots for the latter. These two classes 
disposed of, and there will be a return to the prosperity, the pi 
and happiness of the earlier days of the Republic. Sir, these armies 
were raised to execute the laws and maintain the authority of the 



8 

Constitution in all the States. They are, sir, to suppress armed vie 
lators of that instrument. And sir, it remains for the people at the 
ballot-box to suppress these northern violators of the Constitution, if 
they would preserve the rights and liberties of American freemen. 

For one, wherever I am called, and whenever, I shall be always 
ready to discharge my portion of this duty. Neither the cry of dis- 
loyalty nor the charge of sympathy with the rebels, whether it ema- 
nates from usurpers of the people's rights in higk places, or from the 
base plunderer's of the Government, who make the negro a hobby- 
horse upon which they ride to enormous and extortionate contracts— 
neither, sir, shall deter me from the full and complete fulfillment of 
my duty as a Representative. I denounce here — and no one shall 
gainsay my right to do so as the Representative of a gallant and 
loyal people — the action of this Congress and of the several Depart- 
ments upon the negro question. I denounce >it as having neutralized 
to a great extent the effect of many of the hard-earned victories which 
our soldiers have fought and won for "the Constitution as it is, and 
the Union as it was." This, sir, is what life and happiness has been 
periled for in the loyal States ; for this I now address yon ; tor this, 
upon this issue, I shall go before the people of my State during the 
coming fall ; for this, sir, I shall expect there to speak, to act, and to 
vote ; for this, sir, I expect that extreme men, abolitionists and dis- 
unionists will be banished from the councils of the nation. 

This great work accomplished, grim-visaged war will smooth his 
wrinkled front. The din of arms will be lost in the hum of contented 
industry and the hymn of domestic endearment. The Constitution 
as it is will stand sublimely forth, an enduring monument to the wis- 
dom of our fathers ; the States restored, like stars that have wandered, 
to their original places in " the Union as it was ;" our people once 
more on the highway of nations and on the march towards the fulfill- 
ment of that grand destiny which God has assigned to them. 

All these things I hope for, all these things I shall realize, unless 
the people are again deceived by abolition under some new name. 
Under the na^ne of Republican, abolition can do no more harm; in 
that character its role is ended. It will next appear in a new dress. 
Already its leaders are calling loudly for the formation of a so-called 
Union party — this is indeed an attempt to steal the livery of heaven 
in which to serve the devil. Let the people, being forewarned, be 
forearmed against the next appearance of abolition. Trust no such 
affiliations, for one more success of the abolition party,' under what- 
ever name it may assume, and our nationality is lost forever, and the 
wreck of our Republic will strew the pathway of nations with those 
of Greece and Rome. From the contemplation of such a future I 
turn in horror ; upon such scenes, Mr. Chairman, I trust my eyes may 
never rest, over such results never weep. 



Printed by L. Towers &. Co., corner of Louisiana avenue and Sixth street. 

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